Angel in the Shadows

by Walter Lucius

  He paused and looked at her. She returned his gaze. He knew she was going to talk. They always did eventually. It was their ultimate attempt to come to terms with themselves and to justify what they’d done to the other. Melanie Lombard’s words were calm and deliberate.

  ‘That night, when I realized there was someone behind that door, was the only time I panicked,’ she said. ‘I never thought it would happen to me. As someone used to sailing, you encounter all kinds of situations where you have to keep your wits about you because it’s a prerequisite to making it through alive. Giving in to panic means you won’t make it. As you can imagine, I never expected to have a panic attack in a garden in Amsterdam.’

  ‘We have some idea of how you did it,’ Radjen said. ‘Meijer’s murder. But I’d like to hear it from you.’

  ‘Lots of preparation,’ Melanie Lombard said, and he could hear the relief in her voice. ‘Before you cross an ocean in a sailboat you must be well prepared. More than that: everything has to be just right. Checked and double-checked. Planned down to the smallest detail. I came up with the perfect murder for Meijer. Not a strangulation made to look like he’d hanged himself. Instead a hanging beyond all reasonable doubt.’

  ‘Then why a hangman’s fracture?’

  ‘Practical reasons. People who are suffocating, even when they’re drugged, tend to wildly kick and flail their arms in the air. I didn’t want to take that risk.’

  The same self-satisfied smile he’d seen on her face once before appeared – at the moment Lombard collapsed on the carpet in front of the camera.

  She was now completely absorbed in her own story.

  ‘Scientists in Argentina came up with a stress-free way to kill cattle. They’re guided through a long, padded corridor with subdued lighting. Engulfed by the sound of a Mozart symphony, their bodies are massaged by the padding. As they reach the end of that corridor in utter relaxation, a steel bolt is shot through their foreheads. I applied the same approach to Meijer. I let him believe that everything would turn out fine as long as he trusted me. I would lead him to a new life in Ghana. The night I came to kill him, he believed I was bringing him airline tickets. Of course we had to do this in the utmost secrecy. I’d already given him a prepaid phone when I met him in the car park at Economic Affairs. I would let him know when I’d hand over the tickets. All he had to do was to open the back gate to the garden. I won’t bore you with all the rest … well, the technical details: an injection to sedate him, just to be sure, and then a few pulleys and some sturdy rope – a system that could be quickly removed.’

  ‘But why Meijer? He’d already pleaded guilty. He would have been convicted.’

  ‘There’s no real punishment in a system that makes the guilty into victims. Thomas Meijer was a stupid, naive man. And they’re the most dangerous: blindly following a leader so they don’t have to ask themselves where they’re going. They fall in line because it makes them feel protected, not responsible for what they do. But collaborators must be held accountable for their actions. Meijer was complicit, not just when he ran down the boy, but many times.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Let’s not play games with each other, Inspector. You and I both know that my husband was guilty. And his abhorrent behaviour was facilitated by Meijer, who drove him places for years without a word of protest and …’

  She broke off her sentence and looked at him. Although she’d sounded calm while she was speaking, he now understood how truly upset she was. He saw the turmoil in her eyes, the need she had to articulate everything she’d bottled up inside.

  ‘Do you mind if I tell you the rest while we take a stroll in the garden? I need to stretch my legs.’

  She’d risen before he could respond and was out in front of him, while he still had to stand up. She spoke before he even got to the question of what had happened to her husband.

  ‘Ewald called me that night. Terribly upset, on the verge of hysteria. He said he was on his way home and that I shouldn’t answer the phone if it rang. And I had to draw all the curtains. When he was finally in the room, he was shaking all over. I’d never seen him in such a state. He was in shock. They’d had an accident, he said. And if asked, I’d have to swear that I was at home with him that night. I wanted to know what had happened, why I had to lie. But I didn’t really need an answer. I’d actually known for years what was going on. You see, it’s like alcoholics. My father was one. Deep down you know without being told. When you stumble across a liquor bottle somewhere it doesn’t belong, you can no longer deny it. In Ewald’s case I found a DVD in a desk drawer that should have been locked. The images I saw … He was also on camera, together with other men. Three men with one boy.’

  She was silent as they walked to the other side of the garden together.

  ‘I knew all along,’ she said. ‘And the whole time I did nothing. If the death penalty still existed, he would have deserved it. But it no longer exists. So I condemned my husband to death.’

  She seemed relieved to finally be able to let down her guard. He felt strangely sorry for her.

  ‘I admire your persistence, Inspector. You were right to have your suspicions. My husband loved meat. An hour before the interview, I made him a club sandwich of braised lamb and I spiked the dressing with oleander root. He thought it was delicious.’

  ‘The interview was the perfect alibi,’ Radjen said. ‘You were sitting right beside him when he died. But I saw in your eyes something other than love.’

  ‘Am I such an open book to you?’ she asked.

  ‘On the contrary.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ she said.

  ‘I’m afraid you have to bid your garden farewell,’ Radjen said.

  ‘May I ask you a favour?’ she said. ‘I’d like to do that alone, if it’s okay with you?’

  He hesitated. But she looked so small and vulnerable standing there beside him, he couldn’t bear to say no.

  ‘I’ll give you a few minutes,’ he said, and he walked around to the front of the house, where Esther stepped out of the car and approached him with an irritated expression on her face.

  ‘You didn’t leave that woman alone?’ Esther asked. ‘She’s totally unpredictable now that she’s cornered.’

  ‘She confessed everything,’ Radjen replied. ‘She has nothing left to lose.’

  He left Esther standing there. At the gate to the grounds he signalled to the men waiting in two unmarked vehicles that it was time to search the entire villa.

  Only then did it hit Radjen: he’d left Melanie Lombard on the exact spot where he’d spoken to her during their first visit.

  Between the deadly nightshade and the blue monkshood.

  She has nothing left to lose.

  He raced back around the house to the garden.

  To his immense relief, Melanie Lombard was standing somewhere else – in the late-afternoon sunshine unhampered by the high trees, a dark silhouette in a ray of golden light.

  ‘Have you ever sailed?’ she asked when he was right behind her, still staring straight ahead. ‘I mean actually on the high seas?’

  ‘No,’ Radjen said. ‘But now I’d like you to come with me.’ She seemed not to hear.

  ‘Navigating by the stars. That was my favourite part. The stars guide you. You feel insignificant and at the same time immensely powerful. You’re at the mercy of immeasurable forces taking you where you need to go. That feeling you get when you sail into a harbour … a feeling of mainly … gratitude.’

  Radjen gently took Melanie Lombard by the elbow as a sign that it was time for her to go with him.

  ‘Stay with me for a moment, Inspector. I don’t want to be alone,’ she said as she turned to look at him.

  Blood was running from her nose. She was breathing heavily and struggling to keep her eyes open.

  He picked her up and carried her through the garden. He knew he must have screamed for help, because he felt his mouth moving, but he didn’t hear anything. All the w
hile she kept staring at him, but there was barely a sign of life in her eyes. All the colour had drained from her face.

  When he laid her down in the grass to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, someone pulled him away. It was Esther. Her mouth also moved, but he didn’t understand the words. She felt the carotid artery and shook her head. She stared at him and, besides an accusatory look, he saw something of pity in her eyes. What good did it do him? He didn’t want pity or compassion; he just wanted Melanie Lombard to live.

  But from the dismay on the faces of the men passively standing around her, he now saw it was too late.

  6

  A gigantic cruise ship sailed past on the leaden-grey water of the IJ. The gleaming metal vessel consisted of seven storeys, illuminated by an immense lattice of LED lights. From behind the window of Edward’s office on the top floor of the AND building, Paul took note of the name of the ship: Magnifica.

  A fitting name for the phase they were now in. Appropriate for the sense of triumph he and Edward had felt the moment they heard that Farah was safe and about to be repatriated to the Netherlands.

  With that same feeling, they were reviewing the layout of the international AND edition dedicated to AtlasNet on Edward’s large computer screen. They’d now arrived at the lengthy concluding report Anya had written about the company’s finances.

  She’d managed to get a near-impossible job done in no time at all. Not only had she produced rock-solid evidence that, as a phantom shareholder, Potanin owned more than forty-five per cent of AtlasNet, but she’d also convincingly documented that during his tenure as CEO Lavrov had funnelled a substantial part of the pre-tax profits, which should have been transferred in their entirety to Moscow headquarters, to a private bank account in Bermuda. The amount in question was a cool two billion dollars.

  ‘This will be his downfall,’ Edward said, handing Paul a glass of whisky. ‘Amsterdam, Jakarta and Johannesburg. The Lavrov triangle. Only a tiny group of insiders were in on it. As soon as we release this, the whole world will know.’

  Edward moved his finger to the ‘send’ button, where it hovered a short while before he withdrew it again.

  ‘I’d like you to do it, my boy,’ he muttered. ‘You pulled it off, the three of you. The other two aren’t here. You are.’

  Paul teasingly clapped his arm around Edward’s shoulder.

  ‘After all these years your sentimentality is outmatched only by your size.’

  ‘So, go on, do it.’

  Paul pressed hard on the ‘send’ button and then tapped his glass against Edward’s by way of a toast.

  They silently watched the cruise ship float past.

  ‘Would you believe that I’ve been thinking of taking such a trip?’ Edward said.

  ‘I’d rather kill myself,’ Paul replied.

  ‘How about another one?’

  Paul handed him the empty glass just as Edward’s desk phone rang. His uncle grumbled, but answered it anyway.

  ‘Roman!’ he enthusiastically exclaimed while gesturing for Paul to pour the whisky himself. ‘What a surprise. We’ve just …’

  His voice faltered. The smile slipped from his face as he listened to what Roman Jankovski had to say.

  ‘It’s Anya …’ he finally said with a sigh, his face ashen. ‘She … she’s …’

  Paul snatched the receiver. ‘Roman, what happened?’

  Haltingly, with a broken voice, the Russian newspaper man repeated his story.

  Early that morning, Anya had left her flat to go to work. Outside the entrance, a man had been waiting for her. He had a bunch of flowers in his hand. That’s what it looked like anyway. But the flowers camouflaged a lead pipe, which the man used to bash her on the head, arms and hands. She lost consciousness and was found in a pool of blood.

  ‘She’s being kept in an artificial coma,’ Roman said. ‘Her jaw is shattered and she could lose several fingers.’

  Head and hands, Paul thought to himself, a journalist’s main weapons.

  His mind was immediately cast back to his meeting with Alexander Arlazarov, the Director of the counter-terror unit in Moscow. The seemingly casual way in which he’d retrieved a photo from a dossier before putting it aside again. The ironic tone of his words, ‘Let’s not talk about your former colleagues here in Moscow, however interesting they may be …’ The picture had been of Anya. The message was clear. We, the FSB, know everything there is to know about her.

  Hacking AtlasNet’s server had been a step too far.

  ‘The Russian police are treating the assault on Anya as attempted murder,’ Roman resumed. ‘Our President has told the press that the attackers will be found and brought to justice. But you and I both know what those statements are worth.’

  ‘Will you keep me posted?’ Paul asked.

  ‘I’ll call you as soon as I know more.’

  The connection was broken. Edward had already taken a seat and was breathing heavily. Feeling dizzy, Paul reached for his uncle’s shoulder to support himself.

  Anya. Kamikaze Anya, as Paul had called her with equal measures of love and ridicule. He’d fallen head over heels in love with her. That had been during his Moscow years. He’d moved in with her, but Anya had driven him mad. She was single-minded and confrontational, pretty much twenty-four seven, and that left no space for anyone else. That was the tragedy of her life in a nutshell. Kamikaze Anya was lonely – in her work, in her few friendships and in her infrequent love affairs.

  He thought back to the morning, eighteen months ago, when he’d closed the door of her apartment behind him as quietly as possible, with hardly any luggage in his hands and a single ticket to Johannesburg in his pocket. He’d just returned. For a brief time. And not even for her, but to help Farah. Anya had picked up on the chemistry between him and Farah and yet she’d helped both of them, in what was for her an unusually altruistic way. And by doing so she’d shown him how much he still meant to her.

  He knew it. He was important to her.

  He thought of their most recent telephone conversation in Gaborone, just before he’d boarded the plane. ‘I’m going to chase down that bastard’s money, even if it’s the last thing I do,’ she’d said.

  What remained was the memory of their goodbye kiss in Moscow. Afterwards, she’d walked away from him, vanishing in the low-hanging mist of Kolomenskoye Park.

  Paul looked out over the water of the IJ again.

  The Magnifica was now only a tiny dot on the horizon.

  7

  She was floating above a web of lights as small as pinheads, stretched out for miles and miles. But soon Jakarta was hidden from view by passing clouds. The Boeing 777, having taken off from Soekarno–Hatta Airport, was headed for Amsterdam. She was on her way home, but strangely enough it didn’t feel that way.

  In what now felt like the distant past, she’d stood in front of the open window of her Amsterdam apartment, looking out over Nieuwmarkt. That had been on the eve of her trip to Moscow, and she’d had a premonition back then that once she’d closed the door behind her there’d be no way back.

  She thought of what Satria had said the night of her training under the weeping fig. Sometimes struggle is just what we need in our lives. Without setbacks, we’re condemned to arrogance and complacency and our lust for life peters out. Unless we spread our wings, vulnerable like a butterfly crawling out of its cocoon, life isn’t worth living.

  The Netherlands, her life in Amsterdam, her job as a regional news journalist: they’d been her cocoon for years. She’d finally crawled out the night she’d seen Sekandar on that stretcher in the Emergency Department.

  Since then everything had changed.

  She had changed

  And now she was flying back to the Netherlands. Back home. But when the KLM Boeing touched down at Schiphol Airport, she was more convinced than ever.

  There was no way back.

  This was no longer her home.

  She’d known even before she’d hugged Paul in the arriva
ls hall. It was the way he looked at her; the few words with which he described what had just happened to Anya in Moscow. It put the outcome of her actions in Jakarta in a totally different light. In her effort to protect Aninda from Gundono’s thugs, she’d put Anya in harm’s way.

  Edward had grabbed hold of her in a way that combined an embrace and a reprimand.

  ‘You’re not to blame, you hear me? The FSB had been on Anya’s case for years; they had a detailed file on her. It’s got nothing to do with what you told Lavrov. They’d known for ages. All they needed was an excuse.’

  While it may have mitigated her pain and guilt, it didn’t make the truth any less horrifying.

  In the Saab on their way to the farmhouse, where Sekandar was waiting for her, Edward received a phone call from Moscow.

  He put Roman Jankovski on speaker phone.

  ‘Anya is still being kept in an artificial coma,’ he reported. ‘She’s stable. We won’t know for another couple of days how bad the neurological damage is. But I’m calling about something else. The Director of the FSB’s counter-terror unit, Alexander Arlazarov, has just announced in a press conference that Lavrov will be tried on suspicion of conspiracy against the state.’

  The ensuing silence in the Saab was deafening.

  Jankovski seemed to sense the atmosphere perfectly.

  ‘You’re right, my friends, there’s little cause for rejoicing.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Farah said. ‘They’re talking about conspiracy. What about the funnelling of money to offshore bank accounts?’

  Roman sounded very firm. ‘They won’t go that far. If the Kremlin were to arrest Lavrov on the strength of our publications, they’d lose all credibility. Instead, they’re putting an absurd spin on things. Lavrov is said to be the leader of a select group of politicians, business people and members of the Politburo, intent on destabilizing the country. By staging the hostage-taking at the Seven Sisters, they wanted to show how weak Potanin really is. That’s the official version now. The Kremlin is using these fake revelations to twist the story to its own advantage. All the work we did is now coming back at us like a boomerang. This morning, special FSB units carried out house searches and arrested a number of prominent politicians and business people as well as some journalists.’